


Truth

by vl19scriptfic



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel
Genre: !!! pls stop, Gen, I'm tired, Male-Female Friendship, and i miss their scenes together, and the shield family is important, and they deserve to be able to lean on one another and heal and move forward, anyway i love their friendship and i miss them, because theyre important, i wouldnt have even mentioned it but it's happened before and i'm just, or an AIDA brand hellbeast with bad hair, or possessed by ward's weird alien cousin, this isnt romantic pls don't @ me saying it should be, where one of them isnt an LMD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-18 04:56:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10609707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vl19scriptfic/pseuds/vl19scriptfic
Summary: A month or so after the team beats the Framework, Daisy and Fitz finally talk things through.





	

**Author's Note:**

> thank you @marvelthismarvelthat for always reading things i write and yelling at me about them. i appreciate it :*

Daisy stood in the doorway for what felt like forever before Fitz finally spoke. 

“I spent so much time not being able to talk when I knew exactly what to say. And now- “ Fitz paused, locking his fingers together to stop his hands from shaking. “Now I can talk just fine and I haven’t got a clue what to say.”

God, he looked so small. He looked like he’d tried to make himself small. Like there wasn’t a single piece of him that he didn’t want to hide from the rest of the world.

Daisy knelt down in front of him, ignoring the cold collision of concrete against her knees. This world was nothing like the Framework. But the bruises up and down her legs and arms felt just as real there as they did here.

“Fitz,” Daisy whispered around the tears in her throat, and the silent scientist met her eyes with a glance as heavy as her heart felt.

“How can- how can you even look at me?” 

Silent no longer. But Daisy recognized the breaks in his speech. Although a rare occurrence, his aphasia still resurfaced once in a while.  

“Fitz, it’s been weeks,” Daisy said softly. The only other sound in the room came from the faintly-buzzing fan above their heads. “I know we’re all still processing everything that happened in the Framework. It’s gonna take more time. But we need to talk about this.

The fan buzzed on, stirring the noiseless air.

“Can I ask you something?”

Daisy blinked, surprised, and nodded her head.

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t joined Shield?”

Daisy let out a breath. The question was both lighter and heavier than she’d braced herself for.

“Not when it matters,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “I can’t pretend I don’t wish I could make the awful things we’ve gone through go away. But I… I couldn’t give up what I’ve gained. By being here. I was never supposed to have a family, but I do now. I’m not sure I could trade that away.”

“I thought you’d say something like that,” Fitz said with what was almost a smile.

“What about you?”

Fitz glanced down at his hands, still fiddling his fingers together. His words weren’t coming as easily as usual, and when he spoke the syllables knocked together like shaky knees.

“I’m not sure there’s anything I wouldn’t do to take back… everything. I wanted to help Radcliffe build something amazing. Something to change the world. If I’d known it would-“

Daisy’s heart tugged.

“Fitz, I know you remember what Jemma said. Now let yourself believe it. You can’t keep blaming yourself for what happed with AIDA. The minute the Darkhold entered the equation, the entire thing was out of our control.” 

Fitz squeezed his eyes shut, tightening the grip of his fingers on one another.

“And can I blame myself for what happened in the Framework? I know the logistics of all of this, Daisy, even the parts I didn’t help to build. I know AIDA altered the code. I know she used us all like little computerized marionettes just like she thinks we used her but that doesn’t – it doesn’t change what really matters here.”

“And what’s that?” Daisy asked. She knew she was pushing him. But it had to be done.

“Even if it wasn’t me, I’m the one who hurt you. I’m the one who hurt Jemma. How can you sit in front of me now when the last thing you remember about me is the face of the man who tortured you?”

His battle with tears had been hard-fought but lost, and now they fell limply down his cheeks. He pressed his hands to his eyes; he was trying either to hide his tears or to form a barricade between them and the rest of the world.

Daisy reached forward despite the knot of fear she felt deep in her chest; it was vestigial fear, she knew, born in a world that no longer existed. It should have died there too, and she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t angry that it hadn’t. She steadied her own hands by wrapping them around his.

“Fitz, look at me.”

He did.

“You want to know how I can sit here? With all of those memories of what Framework-you did? Framework-May? It’s the same reason you can still sit here with me even after what happened with Hive. Hive took over my body. He took over my mind. All I could do was watch from the inside as he made me hurt all of you, over and over again.” Daisy blinked. Her eyes were beginning to burn.

“Fitz, coming back to base after being gone for so long was terrifying for so many reasons, but the worst was how scared I was that you and Mack wouldn’t be able to get out from under the memories of what I did to you. How I almost killed you both. How are you still standing by my side after all of that?”

“I know it wasn’t you,” Fitz whispered, and it was the first time since they’d sat down that his words came out steady. 

“I want you to remember something. It’s what I thought back to when I was stuck in that cell and didn’t know if I’d ever find a way out. Do you remember the day I was in medical after I got my powers?”

Fitz nodded minutely. Daisy tightened her grip on his hands. 

“What did you say to me then?” Daisy asked. It had been forever ago, she thought, but it still meant the world. She could only hope it might mean as much to him.

“I told you it was okay that you were different,” Fitz said softly. His voice had once again regained its ragged edge. “After what happened. That there wasn’t anything wrong with that.”

“I know.”

Daisy couldn’t help but notice how cold Fitz’s hands were. ‘ _Cold_ ’ was just not something she associated with him. Not in any context. Not even now, with the face of AIDA’s perfect monster matching his in her mind. She had to know he could get past this. She had to know he could be Fitz again – brilliant, clumsy, caring Fitz – because everything else fell into line afterwards. There had to be a way they could all put the Framework behind them. That world was virtual. The scars it left? Those were real.

“I know, because I remember it word for word,” Daisy said, meeting Fitz’s eyes and seeing the brief flicker in his gaze that told her he was fighting the urge to succumb to shame and glance away. “I remember everything you said to me that day, because I still think of it on days when I’m more lost than I want to admit. I thought of it when I was in that cell and Framework-you was setting up the interrogation. Right then, it was the only memory of you I cared about. Framework-you was AIDA’s weapon. You are not him.” 

“You believe that? Even if your memories tell you differently sometimes?”

Daisy’s heart broke at the subtle hope in his whisper. It was hope she recognized. Anxious, desperate hope she’d tried to quell to the best of her ability the day she’d taken her first step back into the Shield base after Lincoln’s death. She knew the terror of knowing her family had a new image of her, dead-eyed and dangerous, and not knowing whether or not it was the only image that mattered.

“You’re sure as hell I believe it,” Daisy replied gently, brushing her thumb across the top of Fitz’s wrist. “And as for the memories… I’m working on that.”

Fitz nodded, shutting his eyes as though trying to block out those memories himself.

“You know what I’m gonna say to you now?” Daisy asked, and Fitz looked at her again, a strange mix of hope and fear in his eyes. There was no guidebook for any of this. They just had to push through it. “It’s exactly what you said to me. You’ve gone through something awful, Fitz. We all have. And you can’t expect yourself not to be changed by it. You’re different now. And there’s _nothing wrong with that._ ”

Her whisper gained a fierceness as she spoke, hoping that to the best of her ability she’d give Fitz the push he needed to stand up. To be able to reconcile the two versions of ‘Fitz’ in his head. Himself, and the Leopold James Fitz that AIDA had carved from code with Pygmalion's precision and made into her own deadly Galatea.

Tears swam in Fitz’s eyes even after he tried to blink them away.

“You still trust me to be me? You can look at me and not see – see him? Can Jemma?”

“I think you need to give Jemma a chance,” Daisy said, relaxing into her shoulders. She was getting somewhere. “You and Jemma have been through… everything together. I know there isn’t a mountain she wouldn’t climb for you. Even if that mountain is working as hard as she can to turn off all of those awful images AIDA left in her mind. She can do it. I believe in her, just as much as I believe in you. And just as much as I believe in the two of you together.”

Fitz let out a shaky laugh, trying to smile.

“Thank you,” he said, and Daisy just squeezed his hands again. There had to be a point at which the understanding between them was stronger than what AIDA had put them through. They had to be stronger than her. They had to prove to themselves and to one another that they were stronger than her.

“What about you?” Fitz asked.

“I have two versions of you in my head now, just like you do,” Daisy replied, the honesty in her words weighing heavy in her throat. “I can’t make what AIDA did go away. But what I can do is refuse to let her version of you be the truth that I trust. Just like you chose not to believe Hive’s version of me.”

“It can’t be that simple, can it?”

“No. It’s not.” Daisy’s mouth twitched into a sad smile. “But Fitz, that’s what makes or breaks a family. When you know and trust the truth of one another despite all the terrible things that happen. You knew the truth of me even after I was possessed by Hive and almost killed you. And I know the truth of you now, even after the Framework.”

Daisy paused, biting her lip to still her nerves. She could leave the next question alone, and spare herself the finality of their conversation. But that wouldn’t be fair to him. And it wouldn’t be fair to her.

“Are we broken?”

“No,” Fitz said immediately, relief mingling with the tears in his voice. “No, we’re not.”

It was his turn to squeeze Daisy’s hands in his and hope with all of his heart that despite the horrors they’d all gone through, the family he’d found with Shield was still intact. He knew his hopes matched Daisy’s in that moment.

“Good,” Daisy said, smiling for the first time since they’d begun to talk. She could feel the cool pressure of a tear in the corner of her eye, but didn’t move to wipe it away.

“Daisy, I’m so sorry,” Fitz whispered, his voice at once timid and gut-wrenchingly raw. His hands were no longer shaking; they were still instead, as though if he stopped moving he could somehow stop himself from breaking down.

Despite the fragments of panic she felt deep in her stomach, Daisy pulled him into a hug, knowing she was probably squeezing him too tightly and not bothering to care.

She didn’t say ‘It’s okay’ because it wasn’t.

She didn’t say ‘I forgive you’ because it wasn’t Fitz who needed to be forgiven.

She didn’t say ‘You don’t need to apologize’ because it wouldn’t help him heal.

All she said as she rested her head on his shoulder was “I’m sorry too.”

In truth, they weren’t really apologizing for versions of themselves that didn’t exist. They were apologizing for all of the hurt they’d gone through over the years, and for all of the times they hadn’t been able to be there for one another. 

But they weren’t broken. Daisy wouldn’t let AIDA break her family. None of them would. 

“We’re okay,” Daisy whispered, finally beginning to believe it.

“We’re okay,” Fitz echoed back.

Pygmalion may have been the master sculptor, but in the best versions of the story, Galatea had her own voice. For the second time, Fitz was beginning to find his again.

Like so many things, it gave Daisy hope.


End file.
